"Yes, auntie, I think I am fortunate," said Laura, with complacent emphasis. "I have found a man not only able to gratify all my tastes--and you know that many of them are rather expensive--but he himself satisfies my most critical taste, and even fills out the ideal of my fancy." Mrs. Arnot gave a sudden sigh. "Now, auntie, what, in the name of wonder, can that foreboding sigh mean?" "You have not said that he satisfied your heart." "O, I think he does fully," said Laura, hastily, though with a faint misgiving. "These tender feelings will come in their own good time. We have not got far enough along for them yet. Besides, I never could have endured a passionate lover. I was cured of any such tastes long ago, you remember," she added, with a faint laugh. "Poor Egbert!" ejaculated Mrs. Arnot, with such sad emphasis that Laura looked up into her face inquiringly as she asked: "You don't think he will care much, do you?" "Yes, Laura; you know he will care, perhaps more deeply than I do; but I believe that he will wish you happiness as truly and honestly as myself." "O, auntie! how can it be that he will care as much as yourself?" "Is it possible, Laura, that you have failed to detect his regard for you in all these months? I detected it at a glance, and felt sure that you had also." "So I did, auntie, long since, but I supposed it was, as you say, a mere regard that did not trouble him much. I should be sorry to think that it was otherwise." "At all events, it has not troubled you much, whatever it may have cost him. You hardly do Haldane justice. Your allusion to his former passion should remind you that he still possesses the same ardent and impetuous nature, out it is under control. You cannot return his deep, yet unobtrusive, love, and, as the world is constituted, it is probably well for you that this is true; but I cannot bear that it should have no better reward than your last rather contemptuous allusion." "Forgive me, auntie; I did not imagine that he felt as you seem to think. Indeed, in my happiness and preoccupation, I have scarcely thought of him at all. His love has, in truth, been unobtrusive. So scrupulously has he kept it from my notice that I had thought and hoped that it had but little place in his mind. But if you are right, I am very, very sorry. Why is the waste of these precious heart-treasures permitted?" and gathering tears attested her sincerity.